


The Price of Betrayal

by Myxini



Category: Supernatural
Genre: Episode: s06e20 The Man Who Would Be King, Episode: s06e22 The Man Who Knew Too Much, Episode: s07e01 Meet the New Boss, Gen
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2013-07-04
Updated: 2013-07-04
Packaged: 2017-12-17 15:52:37
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,349
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/869281
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Myxini/pseuds/Myxini
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Castiel just wishes that doing dirty work didn't mean he has to be so alone.</p>
            </blockquote>





	The Price of Betrayal

It had always been in Castiel’s nature to commit himself wholeheartedly to anything he did. In some ways, that was simply part of being an angel. Soldiers of God were expected to be unswerving. But Castiel had always taken up his duties with a little extra something that his brothers and sisters lacked. Determination, perhaps. Or stubbornness. One might even call it passion.

The trait had often served him well. It had given him the strength to tear through the ranks of Hell and raise Dean Winchester from perdition. It had caused him to feel responsibile for the safety of the man he had saved—driven him to check up on the Winchesters, allowed him to befriend them. During the difficult months of his slow fall from grace, it had reassured him that allying with humanity was the right thing to do.

Now, as Castiel sits alone on the cold stone bench, he fears that this time, he’s gone too far.

He stares out across the snowy park. The silence is strange, after nearly an hour of listening to his own voice. It’s also disheartening, considering that he has just finished pleading with God to send him a sign.

A reply isn’t likely—Castiel knows that. It’s a foolish, desperate hope. But he doesn’t know what else to do. He has nobody else to turn to. And though he has been shouldering the burdens of a war effort and a risky partnership for months, suddenly he finds that he can’t bear the weight of his plans alone anymore.

He closes his eyes, thinks back to the simpler days when the only thing on the agenda had been the Apocalypse. They hadn’t felt like simpler days at the time, of course. Castiel had lost everything—his faith, his Father, his place in Heaven—until all he had left, at the end, were his friendships and the conviction that he was doing the right thing.

He would give anything, everything, to have that back.

He does not want power. Power is uncomfortable. He can still remember how burned-out he felt after channeling just a fraction of the power of a single soul—Bobby’s. “I never want to do that again,” he’d said, and that had not been a lie. But it doesn’t matter what he wants. He _needs_ power.

If it weren’t for that—if it weren’t for the fact that Heaven and Earth hang in the balance—he would give it all up, in an instant, to have Dean and Sam and Bobby standing behind him.

Castiel had chosen not to ask Dean for help out of a desire to avoid troubling him. But it’s obvious that Dean is troubled anyway, and much of it is due to what Castiel has done. The angel opens his eyes and glances down at the empty space beside him on the bench. Briefly, he imagines Dean sitting there, imagines that all the doubts he has just confessed to his indifferent Father had instead been shared with Dean. He can visualize how Dean’s brow would knit, how he would say, in his unpolished way, “Look, Cas, you know what you gotta do.”

Would this have come to pass if Castiel had made a different choice? Or if he had chosen the same, but told Dean earlier?

It’s too late now, in any case. Much too late. Castiel is reminded of something he once heard Dean say, after a hunt that went awry: “Hindsight is a freakin’ ugly bitch.”

He sighs and glances up at the sky. There has not been an answer. There never will be. His Father is not there. No more than anyone else.

He stands, turns to leave. He is completely alone.

 

\- - -

 

Castiel is completely alone and he doesn’t care anymore.

The blood feels slick and sticky against his fingers. He smears it on the wall with quick precision. There’s not much time.

He should have known that they wouldn’t understand. How could they? They knew nothing about his problems, because they had never stopped demanding that he do something about their own long enough to listen.

He dips his hand back into the jar, swirling the blood. The sigils are halfway done. His heart is racing.

He’d tried to explain. He’d hoped that maybe they’d try to understand, that all the times he’d willingly agreed to their less-than-inspired plans would mean something. But no. It had been no different. They are all the same. Rachel. Balthazar. Even the Winchesters. Even Dean.

Everyone has been so quick to tell him that what he’s doing is wrong. Yet nobody has been able to offer him a better solution. What would they have him do?

The blood is gone. The sigils are finished. Castiel picks up the paper with the incantation. He opens his mouth to start—then pauses to glance around the room.

He’s still alone. Completely alone.

He doesn’t care. He really doesn’t.

They had never cared about his problems before. So why should it matter to him now that they take issue with how he’s handling them?

This is the right thing to do. It has to be. It’s the _only_ thing to do.

If nobody else can see that—well, that’s their mistake.

He turns his eyes back to the paper and reads.

 

\- - -

 

They deposit him on the floor.

He doesn’t even have the strength to sit up. Sam drags over a cabinet for him to lean against. Dean helps him prop himself up against it. His touch is gentle, respectful of the aching weakness that permeates Castiel’s vessel.

It’s much better treatment than he expected. Much better than he deserves.

When he appeared to the Winchesters, he was prepared to beg for their help. He expected to be dragged unceremoniously into this building—handled roughly, pushed and shoved around. He anticipated verbal abuse. After everything he had done, he thought that his former friends would revel in his suffering.

He had been wrong, yet again. They are good people. They still care.

Castiel closes his eyes. The immense waves of power roil within him. It’s so much. Too much. He doesn’t remember how he ever felt that he could contain it all. He can feel the dark stirrings of the Leviathans grating at the edges of his consciousness. They’re poking and prying, looking for the weak spots in his control. He swallows and tries to force them down.

Sam comes over, asks him about the blood. He touches Castiel’s shoulder as he speaks. It’s an earnest gesture, full of concern. It makes Castiel feel simultaneously better and worse.

He broke Sam’s wall, yet Sam still cares. They all do.

And Castiel cares too. He cares a lot.

During the months he’d spent drunk on soul-power, the only things he’d concerned himself with were righteousness and sin and truth and other abstractions that, at the core, were impossible to really care about—care about in the same way you could a person, that is. Now that he’s left the high and hit the hangover, he can see straight again. You can’t touch truth on the shoulder. Righteousness will not hold you up when you can barely stand.

Castiel cares a lot and he must make amends.

He musters his strength. “Dean.”

Dean turns, listens as Castiel struggles to apologize. The words don’t come out right. Castiel’s too weak, too sickened by the power that bubbles noxiously inside him to put his thoughts in order. No words could be enough anyway.

When the sigil is done, Bobby helps Castiel up. Every scrap of Castiel’s strength is going towards holding himself together at this point. He sways on his feet, falls. Strong arms catch him and pull him back up. Dean.

Through his blurring vision, Castiel sees the portal open ahead of him. He feels some faint spark of relief. He can’t hold on much longer.

He turns to look back at those he betrayed. His eyes lock on the man he raised, the man who then watched him fall so far.

“I’m sorry, Dean,” he says. Then he lets go.


End file.
